


from here on in, i shoot without a script

by sighless



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Autistic Character, M/M, Qun, Qunari Culture and Customs, Tevinter Culture and Customs, also not really, everyone is autistic, kinda but really vaguely
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-16
Updated: 2015-09-17
Packaged: 2018-04-21 01:59:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4810547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sighless/pseuds/sighless
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>a collection of probably unrelated oneshots that fuel my need to portray every single character as autistic</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. the iron bull, mindless inhuman keeper of illusions

**Author's Note:**

> brief mentions of blood and murder (of tal-vashoth)

  
_"Tama, how will I follow the Qun?"_

Now, his horns growing in and his voice getting deeper, he wonders how he ever could have doubted his ability. The structure, the schedule, the rules.

Each morning he rises like clockwork, recites his dedication to this way of life in a tongue that vibrates through his nerves, pushes blood through his veins just a little harder. All around him, other voices come in with synchronized prayer. There is no power higher than their unity.

He is already much taller than the Viddathari he watches, under the guide of the older Qunari with him. They teach him and his peers the dangers of turning against this way of life, the savagery that ensues. Rage boils low in his gut. It does not show on his face, blank and watchful, focusing without being too obvious about the target.

His teachers praise it. It was never an effort to begin with.

His beard fills out. _Hissrad_ , they call him, horns clawing their way up and capping out just before tearing down the sky. _Liar._

He does not think he lies that much.

The blood of Tal-Vashoth pools at his feet. The stench pulls its way up his legs - he does not wash his boots for a few weeks after, but cannot stop washing his hands.

In his tent later, he runs the vitaar between his fingers. The clumps of paint burst open on his thumb, and he swirls the colors around in a soft trance. The callouses on his hands feel number, and he presses his nails against the rest of the skin to feel the sting.

He sits in a bar with too many memories to drink away, more than the Re-Educators could ever know what to do with. The bartender looks at him, mutters something -- but he can see the way her apron is knotted, a style used mostly by dock workers tying down boats in Orlais. The smile comes easy, and he's reached into his mind for words he knows just as well as all his prayers.

"This mead reminds me of this great little place in South Nevarra, I can't remember the name -- I'd like to go back again."

Her shoulders relax, and she smiles, chatting, laughing when he winks every now and then between phrases he's saved in his mind and stitched together.

 _Hissrad,_ they'd called him. _Liar_ , they'd called him. He only keeps up the illusion that this is all some great act he's memorized -- it is, in a way, just not the way they think.

 _The Iron Bull_ , he'd called himself. A mindless thing, a monster, because wasn't that all he was now? A collection of rituals with vitaar-stained fingers, horns casting a terrifying shadow in the light of the fire while Rocky and Krem swap obscene stories. Krem leans over, his chest swinging free without its usual cloth wrap to push it inward. Rocky laughs at something, but so hard the noise is knocked out of him, and he shakes silently while Krem wipes tears from his eyes.

"You there, Chief?"

He smirks, rolling the eye he has left, though he feels the muscles behind the missing eye twitch to roll the ghost. "Don't mind me, boys, just keep lying to each other about the women you've taken to bed."

"So has riding the bull ever lasted longer than ten seconds, or are you not steady enough for that rodeo?"

Rocky is wheezing now, almost falling over when Dalish comes out of her tent, demanding they all go to bed at some point.

_"Tama, how will I follow the Qun?"_

The demon-kid yanks the memory from him while they are out gathering herbs for a Dalish woman back at the campsite they'd run into. The boss stiffens, watching as Bull cannot find a response tucked away, instead barking out his insecurity, his terror.

He relaxes when the kid consoles him.

He chats with the halla herder while Cole pets the creatures so obviously yet without anyone noticing. The elf is uneasy, but either Cole's presence or Bull's slack figure makes the man open up more while Llevalan hands the woman further into camp a basket of spindleweed and elfroot.

The boss speaks Elvish to the old man in charge, looking so at ease and at home despite the fact he wasn't any more. Bull wondered if he could get that effect from some of the Tal-Vashoth at Skyhold, but it would never be the same again, he knew. He could still smell their blood, and could never believe himself to be one of them.

 _Amatus,_ the man calls him.

That is something he can be, even if he has no script for it just yet.


	2. dorian, pariah of house pavus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> mentions of conversion therapy in the form of blood magic and of magical self harm (burning)

"No, you're doing it wrong, you must bend at the knee - yes, exactly like that! Keep that position."

And the old woman all but trots away, correcting the posture of the rest of them. Twelve little boys in two straight lines, all bent at the knee, wobbling. The altus of House Pavus becomes a statue of himself, like all the paintings of his ancestors that stare at him when he walks down the hallways.

His hand twitches against his chest, and for a moment he flutters his fingers in tune with his heartbeat.

" _What are you doing_? Stay still!" her eyes are narrowed onto him, slits thinner than the points of her servant's ears, a young boy adjusting the arms of those who would be his peers if not for his caste.

One of them laughs, and Dorian's cheeks burn.

When she praises him next, he makes sure his fingers only flutter when she is looking another way. The elf sees him, but says nothing, does not attempt to still his hand, only tilts Dorian's chin up a little higher when it droops.

Later, his cheeks thin out, jaw stretching out wider in harmony with the wings of his eyeliner. His voice cracks, but he manages to make his compliments flow with them, and he knows they all find it charming when they can see straight through it.

They talk about learning the Game for courts and balls, but even behind closed doors it is all theatrics, he exits the stage to sleep and reenters to give his lines at breakfast to servants who applaud his tact and parents who only notice when he slips up.

Beneath the shade of all the trees, he sits with a slave who shows him how to create elements from his palms, and he ignites a fingertip to watch the world move in dizzy swirls behind it. He nearly burns his eyebrows off before the elf stamps out the flame with dust, settling a rock of ice into his palm that he presses to his lips.

He learns to flip between the fire and the ice, then to send lightning through his fingernails into his thighs or across his chest, gently, when he cannot flutter his fingers in satisfaction.

His voice settles into a deep lullaby beneath the moon, then is muffled against a shoulder the color of brown glass, and just as shiny with sweat. He claws against the other boy's back, sending ripples of lightning and fire at all the right moments, and fluttering, too.

When he wakes up, it is to screaming, and the chest he fell asleep watching rise and fall is still now, and in the future he will lie awake still not knowing whether the fault was in his own staccato shocks or his father's deliberate electrocution.

He finds little reason to move his hands very far after that.

He learns all the lines and is still at a loss for words when his temple throbs, and he can smell the blood on the floor. There is a woman in the bed, someone who once kept him from burning himself once, but could never keep him from each time afterward no matter how much he prided his skin.

He runs.

The Game changes and the rules are all different -- they keep him up, hands shaking at everything he needs to relearn.

Dorian flutters his fingers against amidst all the books of Skyhold, though pulls up a bored and mocking tone when the Inquisitor comes up, tattoos swirling against his cheeks the same color as the servant boy's. Lavellan flirts, and Dorian smiles, winking, turning back coy lines he has written over and over again against his mind.

He pours himself of the history of these foreign lands he's found himself in, their customs and rituals and he writes charts to decide when he should fall into them and when to feign ignorance and superiority of noble birth.

Even out in woods that reek of wet dogs, he finds nothing more abhorrent than the way Bull makes remarks without a hint of subtlely, but no one reacts more than rolling their eyes or laughing. In the tavern, he tries to flirt back, but with no response beyond casual conversation, as if the two were stuck in some stalemate.

He shudders against the chill in Emprise du Lion, and Bull yells at him to pull his skirt up.

"I'm not wearing a _skirt!_ " he says indignantly, though the swish of his robes helps him feel his own legs, and later on he groans about the Qunari's awful trousers. The colors burn his eyes and make him dizzy.

When Lavellan tells him about the letter, they storm into the bar and it takes all his energy not to scream. His hands wring. "You tried to _change_ me." And it means so much more, the way the man keeps trying to catch his eyes, and Dorian is tired of pretending he can look there, decides to make it obvious that his gaze is right on his father's throat.

He takes it out on a dragon later, sending flames to its neck, trying to burn through its esophagus, and ahead he can see the Bull almost bouncing with joy, bellowing out something in Qunlat before swinging down his maul.

Later, in the tavern, when he spins from all the wine in his head, he steadies himself against a wide gray arm, looks up into an empty eye socket where he can focus better. The broken tooth they both wear knocks together, both halves joining where they cannot. It has taken him so long to find another person who is tired of the Game following them even in private.

" _Kadan_ ," the man calls him.

His hands flutter freely, tapping against the man's chest, in tune with his heart. 

 


	3. varric, occasional unwelcome tag-along

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> this is so short im sorry ill probably write another varric chapter. tw for animal death/killing (a bear)

The day is dull, and the clouds hang low like mothballs over the trees - _no, that isn't right, scratch that out, dip his pen back in the ink_. The clouds exhale against the trees, branches holding back the sky just enough to keep the breach far enough away. _Yes, better, underline twice._

The dwarf looks up and folds the corner of the scene in front of him, bookmarking this battle to use its colors later. Brown grass clinging to Tiny's boots, a stocky blur of black and silver as Hero charges shield-first into a bear leaning back on its hind legs. With its thick coat and beady eyes, it could have passed for Blackwall's cousin, almost.

He aims Bianca to fire somewhere into the beast's chest. It roars, thrashing its head to meet his eyes. Lightning strikes, and Lavellan twirls his staff around to command it to spread.

It finally sags against the earth, after nearly cracking it open from the weight of the fall.

Hero is helping His Inquistiorialness skin the thing when Tiny stretches (Varric can hear his spine crack) and looks down to him. Behind the swell of his stomach, he looks bored -- no, calm. No... Relaxed? That's not right either. Easier to write it from imagination than know it on their faces.

He looks at Varric, anyway. Says, "Hey, you gonna write me into one of your stories?"

If he had any ounce of magic in his body, he is sure his face could have pushed away the clouds and lit up the world better than the sun could ever hope to try. He can see it now, can fit the name - **Bull** \- into the way the man's muscles are shaped, tight against each other while his chest almost heaves over his stomach, the way his horns curve and strike upward. It is all ink and parchment in front of him, standing at the height of a mountain - _no, too cliche._

"How could I _not_?"

Lavellan waves them over, sack full, Blackwall already walking ahead. The dwarf locks his crossbow onto his back while Tiny continues, "Well, when you do -- make sure you get the musculature right." He flexes here, eyebrow raised. "Because this isn't just endurance work, it took a lot of strength training to get here!"

The rogue smiles, adjusting the _B_ to fit in all places his muscles met, a tangled storm across a grey sea. "You want to use words like rippling. Or ripped! Ripped is good too!"

Tiny is still looking at him, smiling (that much he could figure out), and he can't help but laugh, "Like... the Iron Bull's belly was prone to rippling after every meal. He rarely wore shirts as they ripped under the strain."

"That hurts, Varric. That's hurtful." But his smile didn't fall, so maybe it isn't.

Later, by the campire, a scroll upon his knee, he scratches it out all over again:

_The Bull looks at him, rolling his eye -- and for a moment it makes him worry, but then his belly ripples with laughter and he keeps the smile. Years of training has taught him to give the people he cares about what they need, and he cares about his companions and how well they understand him. With the trees looming over them, the heavy-set Qunari spy warps his features into something that is not a lie about his feelings, just a misrepresentation of how he would normally present them._

Yes, the letters fold together, and everything makes sense this way.

He turns the tents into lines and shapes, turns the killing of the bear into vowels and clauses and onomateopoeias of sword against flesh, boots against dust, backs against trees.

With this story, he rocks himself in front of the fire, remembering in sentences and paragraphs and too many scratch-outs about other fights, fights to come, but he does not fight himself to stay awake.

There are other chapters to worry about.

 


End file.
